English 424 Technical Report:
Writing as Situationally-Dependent Technology
The Function of X (your genre) at Y (your context):
Here you will have a metaphor or some kind of catchy subtitle
Abstract/Executive Summary
Here will be the text of the abstract/executive summary.
Introduction and Background: What, When, Where of
the Context
Here is a Sub-Head
Here you will need to explain to a reader who knows nothing
about your context a wide spectrum of information that shapes it. You can start
out with when, where, and what kind of context it was, but you will clearly
need to go into much more about its culture, who its members were, what positions
they held relative to each other, and what the various goals were of the various
members of the context.
Here is a Sub-Head
Here you will need to explain to a reader who knows nothing about your context
a wide spectrum of information that shapes it. You can start out with when,
where, and what kind of context it was, but you will clearly need to go into
much more about its culture, who its members were, what positions they held
relative to each other, and what the various goals were of the various members
of the context.
Data: The Genre you are Analyzing, Its Features,
Writers, Readers, and Common Usage
Here is a Sub-Head
In this section of the report you will share detailed
descriptions of what the document is, who its writers and readers are, and how
it works.
Here is a Sub-Head
In this section of the report you will share detailed
descriptions of what the document is, who its writers and readers are, and how
it works.
Results and Analysis: Characterizing How the Document
Functions and How such Function is Situationally Dependant
Here is a Sub-Head
In this key last section of the report you will lay out
the ways that the genre functions "situationally." That is, if the
document functions well for some, it must line up very accurately with those
users ideas of what the context and/or document are supposed to do. Where it
doesn't work so well, odds are very good there are significant contextual conditions
that play into the function. So this section is where you will do the analysis
and develop what the report is really about.